This story contains discussion of sexual abuse and sexual assault.
Ashton Kutcher has returned to Instagram three months after he and Mila Kunis were forced to apologize for letters they wrote in support of Danny Masterson.
On Thursday, the actor celebrated the first night of Hanukkah with an Instagram post to his 5.2 million followers.
“We see miracles happen when we make miracles happen for others #happyhanukkah,” he wrote beside a photograph of a menorah with the first candles lit.
Though Ashton is not Jewish himself, his wife, Mila, is, and the pair have been known to celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah with their two children, Wyatt and Dimitri.
Ashton’s holiday message is the first Instagram post since he and Mila issued an apology after their letters in support of a convicted rapist leaked online earlier this year.
In case you need a reminder, Ashton, Mila, and Danny have been close friends since they worked together on That ’70s Show throughout the late '90s and 2000s. It was during their time on the series that Danny drugged and raped two women at his Hollywood Hills home.
After being found guilty of the crimes in May, Danny was eventually sentenced to 30 years to life in prison in September.
It was only a few days after his sentencing that court documents revealed that Ashton and Mila were among Danny’s close friends and family who wrote written letters to the judge asking for leniency ahead of the sentencing.
In his letter, Ashton described Danny as a “role model” and asked the judge to reduce his sentence, saying that his former costar and friend is a not an “ongoing harm to society” and that it would be a “tertiary injustice” for his daughter to be “raised without a present father.”
Meanwhile, Mila spoke of Danny’s “exceptional character” and wrote that he had a “tremendous positive influence” on her and “the people around him.”
Notably, Mila also praised his “dedication to leading a drug-free life,” which people found especially troubling in light of the fact that Danny used drugs on the women he raped.
Needless to say, the couple were faced with intense backlash over the letters, prompting them to issue an apology — which ultimately made matters worse.
In the apology video, which Ashton shared to his Instagram page, the pair start by saying that they “support victims” and go on to explain that they wrote the letters at the request of Danny’s family, to “represent the person that [they] knew for 25 years.”
“The letters were not written to question the legitimacy of the judicial system or the validity of the jury’s ruling,” Mila says to the camera before Ashton adds that the letters “were intended for the judge to read and not to undermine the testimony of the victims or retraumatize them in any way.”
“We would never want to do that. And we’re sorry if that has taken place,” he goes on.
For a number of reasons, the “insincere” video was met with fierce criticism, with one Instagram user calling it an “apology that lacked accountability.”
A lot of people also took issue with the fact that Ashton and Mila didn’t explicitly apologize for writing the letters, but said that they were only “intended for the judge to read.” The backlash became so intense that Ashton was forced to disable the comments on the video.
In the time since, both Ashton and Mila have maintained a low profile — aside from a text message Ashton shared to his dedicated mailing list days after the apology video was uploaded on Sept. 9.
It goes without saying, fans weren’t impressed by the move in light of recent events, with people labeling the messages “flippant” and tasteless.
Days after this, Time magazine reported that Ashton had stepped down from his position as chair of the board of Thorn, which is the anti–child sex abuse organization he founded back in 2009 alongside his ex-wife, Demi Moore.
